Campaigners in crisis mode amid fear of 'bimbo eruption'

By Stephen Robinson

12:01AM GMT 13 Feb 2004

If there is one development guaranteed to strike terror into the hearts of a presidential campaign team when they think they are rolling to victory through the gruelling winter primary schedule, it is girl trouble.

The allegations publicised yesterday by the Drudge Report website about Senator John Kerry were unsubstantiated and seemingly very thin, but they nevertheless have the potential to be serious by distracting the staff and undermining the progress he has made with his recent run of primary victories.

Just over 12 years ago, a promising young southern governor named Bill Clinton was getting the "Big Mo" towards the New Hampshire primary when the candidate suffered what his staff always feared was coming.

Her name was Gennifer Flowers, a Little Rock lounge singer, who alleged she had answered to his pet name of Pookie in the course of a long and passionate affair.

Given their boss's energetic track record in his home state of Arkansas over many years, the Clinton campaign staff had long known it was only a matter of time before they would be placed in full crisis mode.

They even had a term for what they dreaded - a "bimbo eruption" - and Miss Flowers erupted upon the scene with such force when she appeared in the pages of a supermarket tabloid that the Clinton campaign was almost destroyed.

American political sex scandals spread into the public consciousness in a circuitous way: the mainstream press is loath to soil its hands with allegations about the private lives of politicians, and in its initial rebuttal, the Clinton campaign made much of a serious candidate being assailed by "tabloid trash".

Back in 1992, the American press initially ignored the story. But when word did spill over into the mainstream media, along with much more serious allegations that the governor had lied in his explanation of how he evaded the Vietnam draft, Hillary Clinton was persuaded to join her husband on network television in her famous "stand by my man" defence.

Though Mr Clinton was forced much later to acknowledge the truth of Miss Flowers's claim, the joint performance was convincing enough that night to salvage the campaign.

Mr Clinton scraped into a respectable second place in the 1992 New Hampshire primary, declared himself to the "comeback kid", and never looked back on the road to the White House.

The unsubstantiated allegations which threw Mr Kerry's campaign into crisis mode yesterday are potentially more serious because they are said to relate to an office intern, rather than to a mature habitue of Arkansas's racier nightclubs.

Any office in Washington is packed with these eager, decorative young women who, in return for peppercorn salaries, will work in menial capacities to pad their CVs and enjoy the whiff of power.

In the era before political correctness banished three martini lunches in smoke-filled rooms, female interns were regarded by many senators and senior administration officials as perks of a gruelling job in Washington.

President Clinton proved unable to resist the lure of a confused young volunteer on the White House staff, Monica Lewinsky. The president's fumbling encounters with the star-struck intern in the White House led to impeachment proceedings and almost forced his early ejection from the presidency.

Dabbling with interns could be fatal, particularly for a Democrat, because it raises questions not just of sexual incontinence, but of sexual harassment.

The women's groups which have powerful influence in the Democratic party would not look kindly on a candidate who has exercised droit de seigneur around the office.

Mr Kerry's staff know that whether the allegations are true or not, they will have to stop this putative "bimbo eruption" very quickly if they are to maintain their recent momentum.